It’s fair to say I’m used to unusual requests. Impossible requests. Drunken requests. I’ve pretty much heard it all.
A wife who wanted me to fix her dishwasher “within the hour” because she was having a small dinner party and had no maid to wash the dishes. A man who wanted me to go through his septic system by hand to search for a ring, because tools might damage the gold. Those things are commonplace. Those things are any given Tuesday. I’ve learned how to say no a thousand different ways and learned to say yes in a way that means Okay, but never ask me to do this again.
But Alice’s request was a first: she wanted to hire a bodyguard for her husband. Just to get them through the week. I told her I’d come over to discuss it. A delay tactic, for sure. But I needed time—not to decide, not to find just the right person, but to craft, carefully, what I needed to say. I did not go over there to see her daughter.
But how can you keep anything from Caroline? I asked Alice to meet me at their house, since I needed to check on it anyway. Make sure the tarps were secure in the front, since the sod hadn’t come in yet. Make sure there was no new graffiti or broken windows or any other signs of mischief. The things you might do in the off-season.
When she was five minutes late, then ten, I started walking over to the cottage.
No sign of Alice as I approached. Car gone. Maybe she’d changed her mind? Then the door banged open, and out came Caroline.
“I hope to God you ignored her,” she said.
“What?”
“When she asked you for security detail,” she said, laughing. “Jesus. What was she thinking, that you could just fly over some bouncers from the Cape?”
“You think it’s funny?”
She turned to me, her eyes suddenly cold. I’d forgotten how quickly they could turn dark.
“Well,” she said with a sigh, “since you’re alone, I’m going to assume you’ll tell her you couldn’t find anyone.”
“Caroline,” I said calmly, “I can find anything my clients ask for, if the price is right, and if I want to.”
“Yet here you are. Solo.”
“Yes.”
“Here to do what, exactly?”
“Here to tell your mother to take your father home.”
“This is his home. Nantucket is as much his home as it is yours.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. She still had the power to wound me. To wound anyone. Some people are born with hard edges and are softened over time, tumbled down, eroded. And others always hit rock, not rolling wave, not foam; they just become sharpened, flintier.
“It’s the right thing to do.”
“Jesus, Matt, what makes you so fucking smart? That you know all the answers all the time?”
I turned to leave. “Tell your mom to take him home, Caroline. Where it’s safe. Before your luck runs out.”
I was around the corner before I heard her following me. The sound of leather flip-flops flying across macadam—that was the sound of summer, more than anything else. Flip-flops and screen doors. The mid-island symphony.
She followed me, and I waited to hear it, ringing out: That Tripp had a right to be here! That she had a right to have a vacation too! But it didn’t come. Her feet followed me, but not her voice. Maybe she hoped I’d look back, change my mind, offer something up. But I didn’t. And neither did she.
I held my ground, and she held hers, all the way to my truck, all the way to her house. When I pulled away, I didn’t see her in my rearview mirror. I looked for her, for her faded red T-shirt and her blue jean shorts and her always-tanned legs. I was wired to look for her everywhere.
But this time, I don’t know where she went.